Will she live up to the memory of her brother, FACEPUNCH Shepard? Who will be in for the hot dicking this time? When will Jackald stop making terrible excuses for humor? ALL THIS AND MORE IN THIS WEEK'S INSTALLMENT OF:

If it's TRUE, (which I still don't believe) I would hope for Combine. They're the only interesting PC exclusive enemies I can think of.

Edited:

I'm conflicted again

I'm on the Collector ship, and I'm a Soldier.

Do I want the Revenant, Claymore, or Widow?

I actually just finished my final ME2 playthrough, and I've done all three, personal favorite for a Soldier is the Widow, Revenant has way too much instability to be more useful, and there are better weapons than shotguns for Soldiers.

I actually just finished my final ME2 playthrough, and I've done all three, personal favorite for a Soldier is the Widow, Revenant has way too much instability to be more useful, and there are better weapons than shotguns for Soldiers.

Yeah, from what I've seen the revenant is silly innaccurate. On Insanity, I need my shots to hit.

I decided to start up ME1 again, used an old character to start a new game. I am currently a level 56 soldier with 9999999 credits, spectre level gear with level 10 mods for all squad weapons and armor. I'm literally just charging through enemies on Insanity, its fun.

Thanks to the utterly terrifying wind (30mph+) in NYC, the NY ME3SPACE thing got moved to Pennsylvania so that the wind would carry it to New York. I have a strange feeling I'm not going to get a copy of ME3 today.

Not that I'd necessarily want the 360 version while I have my PC N7 Edition preordered, but...

And now they're just launching the balloon, no copies. Guessing people who reach the site will get copies early or for free.

Cynical Brit
This chart has been making the rounds and is being used by fanbois to lazily justify Bioware and EA's position. http://i.imgur.com/m77S3.png This is fairly typical, easily influenced people with weak positions tend to flock around things that look scientific. It doesn't mean it's right. To address some specific points.

The production team would lose their jobs! - Bullshit, this is Bioware, the game has no risk of failure what-so-ever and will generate x-bajillion dollars. If Bioware-Mythic can dodge a ton of layoffs as a result of Old Republic (the most expensive game Bioware and EA have ever made and not a guaranteed hit), I'm pretty sure they can keep their jobs with Mass Effect 3, a much cheaper game guaranteed to be a success. Not only that but, IT IS NOT OUR PROBLEM. If EA is laying people off like that, shouldn't we be criticising EA for discarding it's employees so readily? Bioware is an incredibly successful studio, you are seriously suggesting they are only days away from losing their jobs if they don't monetise Mass Effect even more than it already is? (already one of the most monetised standard games EA has ever released, if not THE most). Big devs are not charity cases and we shouldn't be expected to pay $70 to get a feature complete game.

Multiplayer replaces Zaeed! - Bullshit. Multiplayer has been feature complete for months. The demo build we saw a few weeks back is older code supposedly, Bioware claimed 2 months old. Multiplayer WAS NOT developed in the cycle the Prothean and presumably Zaeed content was supposedly developed in. Multiplayer is a case of a fairly major component of the game being sliced off and used to discourage used sales. It is not an incentive, it is not extra content developed just before launch, it is a dishonest comparison.
It may seem like price gouging, it isn't! - Then pray tell explain why the vast majority of companies don't actually do it. If this was a development reality, we'd be seeing every major publisher and developer doing just this, yet they don't. Day-1 DLC is a reality for only a small minority of these groups, not to mention that more often than not that DLC is mostly cosmetic or very easy to create (weapon packs etc). There are actually very few instances of Day 1 DLC and even less of this importance to the story and die-hard fans. Only Deus Ex has done this recently and there are rumours that Gamestop actually FUNDED that development as a pre-order exclusive, so at least you can semi-understand why it is there. It is incredibly dishonest to suggest that this is a development reality rather than price gouging. If this were true it would be common practice and it most certainly is not.
I say, hold the line. Do not be swayed by the arguments of fanbois and white-knights. Brands have encouraged zealous loyality bordering on fanaticism for years. What better way to get away with murder than have their own consumers whipped into a frenzy to defend their actions and undermine any effort for unified consumer action? Our basic rights as consumers are slowly being eroded by these actions and it has to stop. We as consumers will support and reward reasonable development and business practices, but we will not accept exploitation. The axium remains
"If it's done before release date, it should come with the game".

The guy that made that graph misused "laid off". Obviously, Laid off means you lose your job, he wasn't trying to say that the teams working on the game would lose their career once they completed their goal for the game. The guy was meaning to say that they would completely stop working on ME3, and move on to another project if that scenario was true. The fact the TB couldn't realize that, makes him a whole lot less credible and just shows he's losing his focus on the issue.

It's a mission to recruit the Prothean squadmate, but we're not entirely certain whether he's in the game to begin with or not.

One of the achievements for the standard game: [b]Last Witness[/b]: Extract Ancient Technology. Mass Effect two had a similar achievement when recruiting Legion ([b]Friend or Foe[/b]: Obtain Geth Technology). Given the title of the achievement and the requirement, I think it is somewhat safe to assume they're talking about the Prothean.

On an unrelated note: I just completed my heavily xenophobic Shepard (or Claude Shepard...) for Mass Effect. Good lord, I had just about completely forgotten what it was like to be so renegade. Every opportunity I got, I would kill an alien (or fucked them over royally): I killed Wrex myself and dumped his body in the swamps (when they make Shepard an asshole they REALLY make him an asshole), never recruited Garrus (it was kind of hard refusing Garrus- even when he insisted he come along), let Kirrahe die, killed Chorban and sent Jahleed to jail, fucked up Chellick's investigation (killed the contact), blew Shiala's brains out, boiled the Rachni queen alive, killed the Council... you get the point. I was extra nice to just about all humans I met.

It's either been a long time or there were just some things I had never done before. I refused to give Tali the geth data to which she responds with the equivalent of "after we get Saren, screw you, I'm out of here", Liara saluted Shepard and kept things 'strictly professional', and then there was that mission with Lord Darius; I'd never done it before (you have to have a really high renegade score to get it- something I don't have often). It wasn't anything special but still interesting.

But by far the biggest difference to me was the ending after killing the Council. I really think I have only played two games where I did that so a lot of it felt so new. Udina came off as a space dictator more so than: saying that all the aliens are scared and only humanity can lead them- that we must be the ones to lead the new Council. It didn't help that I encouraged a human-only council and to use the human fleets to impose order. Then when I made Shepard admit that I purposely held the fleets back to kill the council, Anderson was like "Good god, how can you even say something like that!"

It was a fun play-through and it felt relatively new, which was great. Now, Mass Effect 2 will be slightly challenging. I want only Miranda, Jacob, and Jack to survive (I don't have Kasumi and Zaeed on this XBox), but I also want to kill some aliens during some of the loyalty mission (Maelon, Samara/Morinth, Jorum Tahleed, etc.) It should prove to be interesting.

One of the achievements for the standard game: [b]Last Witness[/b]: Extract Ancient Technology. Mass Effect two had a similar achievement when recruiting Legion ([b]Friend or Foe[/b]: Obtain Geth Technology). Given the title of the achievement and the requirement, I think it is somewhat safe to assume they're talking about the Prothean.

So the Prothean may be in-game anyways. That would make sense, as it later turns out he was indoctrinated to begin with - so why put that kind of twist in for a character you can't have a proper chat with?

So the Prothean may be in-game anyways. That would make sense, as it later turns out he was indoctrinated to begin with - so why put that kind of twist in for a character you can't have a proper chat with?

We're going to have to see how it works out. Even I am kind of scratching my head as to how it could work out.

It'd be interesting, based on that one screenshot of the Prothean killing Collectors, if the DLC mission is a flashback of sorts where you play as the Prothean during his cycle and showing how he came to be frozen. It's a real long shot, but still an interesting idea.

The true xenophobe Shepard wouldn't recruit Wrex or Garrus in the first place

The game forces you to recruit Wrex or Garrus (because you need to go to either one for information about Fist). I knew I could kill off Wrex later so I chose to recruit him (the game never really gave me the option to refuse him, he just kind of goes "I was paid to kill him, I'm coming"). Trust me, I really didn't want either of them. Hell, if I had my way I wouldn't have Tali or Liara either.

The guy that made that graph misused "laid off". Obviously, Laid off means you lose your job, he wasn't trying to say that the teams working on the game would lose their career once they completed their goal for the game. The guy was meaning to say that they would completely stop working on ME3, and move on to another project if that scenario was true. The fact the TB couldn't realize that, makes him a whole lot less credible and just shows he's losing his focus on the issue.